BLOCK-COPOLYMER ORDERING WITH A SPATIOTEMPORALLY HETEROGENEOUS MOBILITY*

August W. Bosse, Jack F. Douglas, Brian C. Berry, Ronald L. Jones, and Alamgir Karim

Polymers Division

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8541

            Motivated by recent zone annealing measurements on stripe-forming block-copolymer films [B.C. Berry et al., Nano Lett. 7, 2789 (2007)], we study block-copolymer ordering with a spatiotemporally heterogeneous mobility. Specifically, we implement a time- and space-dependent mobility field in the relaxation of a diblock copolymer self-consistent field theory. The model includes a gradient in the local mobility and intrinsic nanoscale mobility variations characteristic of glass phenomenology. The simulations demonstrate that a spatiotemporally heterogeneous mobility can have a significant influence on microdomain ordering in block-copolymer systems, and that nanoscale dynamic heterogeneities associated with glass formation can impact the structure of the ordered block-copolymer microphase.

*Bosse et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 216101 (2007)

Name: August W. Bosse

Mentor: Jack F. Douglas/Alamgir Karim

Division: 854 - Polymers

Laboratory: MSEL

Room, Building: B328, 224

Mail Stop: 8541

Tel: 301 975 6783

Fax: 301 975 3928

Email: august.bosse@nist.gov

Sigma Xi Member: No

Category: Materials (Polymer Physics)